A 35-year-old man who was reportedly waving a gun at a bus stop in Sodo late Monday night was critically injured after being shot at least once by a Seattle police officer with a rifle, Seattle police said.

The armed man, who was taken to Harborview Medical Center , was shot in the chest while standing at the bus stop on the northwest corner of First Avenue South and South Hanford Street, according to police and emergency radio communications.

The shooting occurred at about 9:40 p.m., and was witnessed by at least two civilians, said Seattle Detective Jeff Kappel.

Kappel said police responded to emergency calls of a man with a gun at the bus stop. When the first officer arrived, he saw a person walking away from the man.

The man continued waving the gun in the officer’s presence, and one of the officers at the scene shot him with a .223-caliber rifle, Kappel said.

The rifle enabled a more precise shot at a greater range while there were civilians in the area, without forcing the officer to close to much closer range where his life would have been in greater danger.

While I’m very much against the militarization of police forces using true military weapons and tactics, this incident sounds like a textbook case of AR-15 rifle usage by a law enforcement officer that stopped a threatening individual with a gun that posed what appears to be a clear threat to the public.

Bob Owens is the Editor of BearingArms.com.
Bob is a graduate of roughly 400 hours of professional firearms training classes, including square range and force-on force work with handguns and carbines. He is a past volunteer instructor with Project Appleseed. He most recently received his Vehicle Close Quarters Combat Instructor certification from Centrifuge Training, and is the author of the short e-book, So You Want to Own a Gun.
He can be found on Twitter at bob_owens.
https://bearingarms.com/author/bobowens-bearingarms/